Preserving Excellence at Illinois

Introduction

Dear University of Illinois colleague,

As you know, for the past several months some members of the Urbana faculty have been campaigning for the formation of a collective bargaining unit. They have a legal right to pursue that goal, but we believe it is vital to let our colleagues, administration, community, alumni, and students know that a very large number of faculty do not support the establishment of a faculty union on our campus and/or do not want to be forced into one.

In this spirit, we have drafted the short statement below. We are asking you to consider adding your name to ours. The list of over one hundred and twenty named professors and faculty leaders who have already signed this statement can be found at: http://preservingexcellence.blogspot.com

If you would like to register your agreement that the faculty of our campus would not benefit from being represented by a national labor union, please enter your name, title, department and email in the questions that follow. We will withhold your name from the public list if you request it below. We understand that some faculty are opposed to a union but do not wish to say so publicly for any number of reasons. If you choose this option, we will count you among our numbers but never release your personal information.

We encourage you to forward this link to your colleagues, but ask that you use a non-university email account to do so. We will periodically update the public list of names and titles (but NOT email addresses) for those who that have agreed to have their signatures made public.

Joint Statement of Concern About Faculty Unionization

We, the undersigned members of the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, find no evidence that academic excellence on our campus would be advanced by ceding control of many of our most important decision-making processes to local representatives of a national labor union.

On the contrary, our nationally-recognized campus shared governance system has a strong record of shaping campus and university policy for the protection of faculty interests and the success of our campus missions. There is no evidence that faculty unions on other campuses have enhanced faculty research or teaching profiles. In fact, none of the universities that UIUC has identified as peer institutions (and competitors for top faculty) has a faculty union.

Finally, according to State law, a vote to unionize our faculty would be a vote to require every faculty member in the campus bargaining unit to be represented by the union; faculty would also be required to pay union or “fair share” dues whether they support unionization or not. We do not believe that faculty members should be forced to support an organization financially that they have not personally agreed to join.

We are proud to be faculty members of a world-class research and teaching institution, which has achieved and maintained this status without a faculty union.

*
1.Please enter your first and last name

*
2.What is your faculty title at UIUC?

*
3.What is your primary academic department?

*
4.What is your preferred email address? We will NOT publicly release your email address. We are requesting it so we can validate your sign-up and send infrequent updates on the status of our efforts.

*
5.Please indicate whether or not you wish to have your name included on the public list of signatories.

Yes, please include my name on the public list of signatories

No, please keep my name confidential (do not post on any public lists, but count me in your numbers)